Yeah, the game was designed to be played on normal... BY PANSIES!

 

I jest. Flowers can't play games. Designing any aspect of the game for play by pansies would be nonsensical. u_u

I would probably play on hard mode with expert mode on my first try.

 

I would never play on Ironman mode as inevitably I would die and I don't want to waste time playing through the entire game again. 

I like playing on the hardest difficulty, if it's a game type (i.e. gameplay) that I'm familiar with. UNTIL it's just plain stupidly "difficult." Like... DA 2. The first boss in DA2 was ludicrous on Nightmare (or whatever the hardest setting was). I expended all the potions I could afford, and used the utmost strategy, and could only get him down like 1/4 of his health before everyone died and I was out of healing.

 

When the difficulty just beefs up the attrition-level of everything, I don't like it one bit.

You should try the act 2 boss battle on insanity. 

 

HP bloat is just plain bad. 

 

Dragon age franchise was bearable because it wasn't dnd.

??????????????

 

I played Dragon Age: Origins on Insane difficulty on my first go and the combat was so **** it made me never play the game again. Pretty much involved cheesing your way through everything. Every encounter was 10 archers with knockdown arrows trolling u hard (yes I finished it). Combat was also ridiculously boring.

 

The hardest fight was definitely against Ser Kauthrien in my opinion, to beat that (insane, v1.0 of the game) I had to cheese the resurrection timer/distance and doorways.

 

 

In contrast to a game like Expeditions: Conquistador where it actually optimizes your tactical play significantly and is generally fairly enjoyable (even if the combat in the game becomes a bit stale over time due to lack of assets etc)

 

 

Origins was made to where the more you knew about the game, the better you would do. At first I was getting massacred even on easy, but the last time I played I was on Nightmare and didn't have to cheese the game once. 

If the difficulty does not affect the in-game rewards or plot -

i don't bother with anything higher than Normal (core rules).

Depends on how the difficulty increases work.

If it's something like "enemies do double damage" then that's not really interesting.

If it's something like, 'there will be some extra enemies and they'll be designed a bit tougher in general" then that feels a bit more interesting.

Less "fake" in a way.

 

My first play will probably be Path of the Damned, Expert Mode, Trial of Iron, just to see how far I can get.

Then probably tone is down and take off Trial of Iron.
If I have to resort to cheapness, then I'll definitely end up lowering difficulty.

Not too interested in most extra challenges in this sort of game.

 

 

Much more interested in "challenging" stuff in a game less focused on requisite stat growth, and something more like a Legend of Zelda or Megaman and your goal is "make it through the game without taking a single hit".  A game like, say, Skyrim, you're *going* to take hits no matter what so you better have some hp,  unless you want to be really cheap.

Damned/Expert/Iron for me despite the fact that it's all going to end in disaster. 

 

Depending how the Adventures Guild works I'm probably going to approach my first run similarly to how I play Xcom . Dem rookies can deal with those traps since I'll be too paranoid about losing my story NPC rogue in the first third of the game. 

using adventure hall rookies as expendable fodder is a very gamist exploit, I kind of like it. It's an interesting workaround, at least until you've got some levels and gear going. I wonder when you will encounter the adventure hall and if recruiting from there will cost resources or otherwise be affected by character deaths.

I will certainly play it at the regular difficulty for me. Meaning in most game, the Normal one. Some game are smarter, saying for example “Difficult” is the intended difficulty, and “Normal” is for casual gamers (in that case I'll play difficult).

 

In any cases, I won't play in an artificial high difficulty system, those are almost always badly designed. I'll play at what the dev & creative team had in mind.

 

If I don't enjoy the game because it's too easy in the end, that'll be on the dev & creative team. They have to make a good design and balance, then maybe dumb it down for casual players. Not the other way around.

Blackynoir, that's what they're going to do. The game gets designed for the harder difficulty, and then gets scaled down for the lower difficulties.

It'll be hard/expert/additional settings for me the first time. I certainly intend to do Path of the Damned and also Trial of Iron at some point, but I prefer to save those things for later runs through the game.